The Monster Behind the Mask: The Myth of Diversity

I grew up loving the cartoon Scooby Doo, Where are You?  Every show pretty much ended the same.  The phantom or monster would have their mask ripped off and behind the mask would be some angry janitor, eccentric, or con artist.  So many of the monsters of our day hide behind masks.  They hide behind a demeanor of civility and political correctness.  Like the devil himself, they never tell you the real goal; they wrap it in a desirable good.  No monster hides himself so well as the one who claims to champion diversity.

Diversity is not a bad thing.  On its surface, it is about being able to live in harmony despite our differences.  It is about creating a utopia where physical  differences are recognized and respected.  Recognizing that the human species is made up of many different races, sizes, shapes, abilities, and such and extending to each their inherent dignity and respect is a good thing.  Not everyone need look the same to receive the same God given rights. Ideally, people of different ethnicities, faiths, genders, and cultures should be able to live in peace.  It is a desirable thing.   This is the pleasing mask that is worn by many in our society.  Something much darker lies beneath.

There are many who desire diversity that very much do want peace and equality.  There are many, though, who do not.   For these people, the scream for diversity is anything but diversity, it for a cleansing of those who do not think like them.  It is a picking of winners and losers, for finding useful idiots to carry their placards, for finding the smiley face in front of the demonic glare.

Every age has picked its winners and losers.  Deadly business.  Today's loser becomes tomorrow's winner.  Shifts occur and the upper hand changes.  Revenge ensues.  Adroit politicians pick up on this and shift their allegiances to the prevailing winds.  Today they hide behind the veneer of diversity.  They have hid behind other veneers as well: nationalism, eugenics, religion, reason...the list goes on.  True diversity doesn't look to punish and give the upper hand to one group over another.  In fact, that is the antithesis of diversity. Diversity, in this culture at least, is a tool of social manipulation.

It is the smiley face masking divide and  conquer.  Diversity as practiced in our society is about dividing us as a whole into subgroups.  This diversity pits the subgroups against each other. The smaller subgroups form alliances to take on bigger subgroups.  Politicians pander to get a coalition of these subgroups to be their power base.  If anyone in the defeated subgroup complains, we say we are doing it in the interest of diversity.  The rancor between the subgroups runs deeper and deeper until violence erupts.  This diversity wants us to identify not a human person first, but as member of a victim subset.  It is much easier to manipulate smaller groups than a single people.

Division, though, is not a trait nor a fruit of justice or goodness.  Division is a tool of Satan.  The divisions bolstered by our friends in the diversity industry are based on false premises.  The diversity shock troops need us at each others throats.  They need us to exchange glares, threats, and violence. If you are championing diversity yet seeking to quiet those not like you...you are not championing diversity, but championing oppression.

Perhaps I am somewhat sensitive to this.  I belong to several out of favor subsets:  I am a white, male, heterosexual, conservative, Roman catholic priest....I am everyone's jerk and everyone's pinata.  However what is believed by the diversity tsars about what I must be because I belong to these subgroups is about as truthful as Pinocchio on a bender.  The same is true for any subgroup so defined by the diversity police.  We must stop falling for it.

The truth is this: each of us human beings is unique and is made in the image and likeness of God.  Each one of us is due the same rights and dignity despite the accidental differences we have.  There is no subgroup that we write off as beyond redemption.

Herein, though, is the true monster behind the mask: so much of it is a elaborate ruse to vindicate our favorite sins.  It is the desire to normalize sin.  Notice how objective truth and institutions dedicated to objective truth are vilified?  Notice how self-identification no longer needs to be rooted in empirical evidence, especially if that self-identification puts me into a more desirable subgroup?  Notice how love of sinner now means to love the sin as well?  Notice the adverse and dangerous affects it is having on our country.

My Catholic Faith tells me this: I must see in my neighbor the dignity God has placed in them.  I must love them and be disposed to their good even when they are acting against their good or my good, for that matter.  I am not given permission to persecute.  The extraordinary standard of excellence  to which we are set as Christians means looking for union through conversion of heart and soul.  St Paul tells us that in Christ there is no slave nor free, Greek nor Jew...that He came to unify what sin divided.   Whose side are we on?  True diversity recognizes we are one despite our differences.  If the diversity we are pushing for looks to assign winners and losers...we might want to find a a different word to describe whatever it is we are doing.